After laundry articles such as bed sheets, table linens, blankets, or the like are washed in a laundry facility, they are typically fed into a flatwork ironer and automatic folded into a neat package for use in hotels, hospitals, or the like. In order to obtain a neatly folded, unwrinkled package, it is important that the sheet is presented to the ironer with no wrinkles or folds and with the leading edge straight.
Modern laundry facilities use an automatic spread feeder apparatus to allow more rapid and accurate feeding of the sheets into the ironer. Various spread feeder apparatus' are designed to accommodate multiple operators at different charger stations. This increases the speed at which the sheets can be fed to the spreader clamps at the spreader station and improves the overall output of the spread feeder apparatus. Such apparatus is disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,440,810.
One disadvantage of many spread feeder apparatus' are, that they do not take fully advantage of the capacity of the spreader station due to the time required for transporting the sheets of laundry from the charger stations to the spreader station.
It is therefore desirable to provide an apparatus which improve the use of the capacity of the spreader station and thereby operates even more rapidly than other spread feeder apparatus'.